"Rift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came to a halt, the boats were thrown down and Hugh arrived at the conclusion that they were to stop until morning. In this he found himself mistaken, for with the very next moment he heard the splashing of water, seemingly beneath his feet. Up to now he had been looking upward at the rift in the rocks. Instead of a rocky gorge he now saw the shimmering of water, and a fresh exclamation of surprise ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... south the two lines converge and give place to one great valley (occupied by Lake Nyasa), the southern part of which is less distinctly due to rifting and subsidence than the rest of the system. Farther north the western depression, sometimes known as the Central African trough or Albertine rift-valley, is occupied for more than half its length by water, forming the four lakes of Tanganyika, Kivu, Albert Edward and Albert, the first-named over 400 m. long and the longest freshwater lake in the world. Associated with these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... issues: deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification; famine natural hazards: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions; frequent droughts international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but not ratified - Desertification, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... sharply downward at an angle of some sixty-five degrees, paved with broad stones, and flanked on either side by houses, no two of which occupied the same level, and which seemed to realize their precarious footing, and hug the rift in which they were planted as limpets hug ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... once awakens from its characteristic lethargy, and madly plunges and splutters over a bed of jagged rocks which seem to have been tossed into its channel by some Herculean hand - fill this mighty "rift" in the mountains with a never-ending roar. It has been threatening rain for the last two hours, and now the first peal of thunder I have heard on the whole journey awakens the echoing voices of the caon and rolls and rumbles ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... by a river, now frozen to its bed. But, from the hut door, the rift which marks its course in the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... of Sagara, accepted this command of their father, and once more began to search through the entire world. Now these heroes saw a rift on the surface of the earth. And having reached this pit, the sons of Sagara began to excavate it. And with spades and pickaxes they went on digging the sea, making the utmost efforts. And that same abode of Varuna (namely the ocean), being thus, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... life did breathe That vanished into smoke and clouds swift; So down he fell, that th' earth him underneath Did groan, as feeble so great load to lift; So down he fell, as an huge rocky clift Whose false foundation waves have washed away, With dreadful poise is from the mainland rift And rolling down, great Neptune doth dismay, So down he fell, and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... rift in the sky an early star stole out, and she made a wish on it. That was one of the things Belle had taught her. She started to wish that Barby might be happy. But before the whispered verse had entirely passed her lips she stopped to amend it, adding Uncle Darcy's name and Belle's. Then ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... step by Jesus is brought out strikingly by what follows. What followed is God's comment upon it. Quick as the act was done came the Father's approval. John's crowds were not the only intent lookers-on that day. Jesus stands praying. Since He is going this road it must be a-knee. Then the rift in the upper blue, the Holy Spirit straight from the Father's presence comes upon the waiting Man and the voice of pleased approval. And the heart of Jesus thrilled with the sound of that approving voice. He could go any length, down any steep, if He might only ever hear ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... insoluble. Gold and even platinum—the latter a material which resists all acids at ordinary temperatures—enters into the solution. If now the water thus charged with mineral stores finds in the depths a shorter way to the surface than that which it descended, which may well happen by way of a deep rift in the rocks, it will in its ascent reverse the process which it followed on going down. It will deposit the several minerals in the order of their solubilities—that is, the last to be taken in will be the first to be crystallized on the walls of the fissure through which the upflow ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... horizon furnished little to inspire the disappointed and persecuted Jews. Their eyes were still blinded by the brilliant hopes that had stirred them at the time when the temple was rebuilt. The quenching of these hopes had left them in deeper darkness than before. There seemed no rift in the clouds that overshadowed them. Even their priestly rulers were selfish and inconsiderate. For the faithful few who rose above the discouragements and obstacles that confronted them, however, this period of deepest gloom was lighted by ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... now greatly puzzled and, he had to confess to himself, not a little alarmed. But as the next impatient question was on his lips he stopped short. A cool breeze had sprung up, and was wafting aside the cloud-like fog. A rift in the fog disclosed a portion of the trestle bridge. And, hanging from it, with noosed lariats around their necks, were three limp, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... morning gathering of the field hands and their families. Returning after the work was over, she lingered a moment in the path to the house, looking far across the white country. The snow had ceased, and a single star was shining, through a rift in the scudding clouds, straight overhead. From the northwest the wind blew hard, and the fleecy covering on the ground was fast freezing a foot deep in ice. With a shiver she drew her cloak about her and ran indoors ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... found a rift in the cliff which had been widened and extended by the action of the water draining through it from the plateau above. It gave us a rather rough climb to the summit, but finally we stood upon the level mesa which stretched back for several miles to the mountain range. Behind us lay the broad inland ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it was at your very feet," she said with a bright look into his eyes. For some unaccountable reason, Genevra resented that look and speech. Perhaps it was because she felt the rift ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... and I, lying in the snow that melts all around us in the fierce, scorching glare. Through the lurid rift of smoke I can see the friendly stars. Against that curtain of blaze, strangely beautiful in its sinuous strength, I watch the black silhouettes of men running hither and thither like rats, gutting the houses, looting the stores, tearing the hearts out of the homes. The fire seems a great ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... clerk that the box presented by the district attorney had not come from their store, was the only rift in the otherwise dense cloud of incriminating evidence for the State, and the prosecution closed its case with perceptible gloom hanging over every person connected with the defense, and the jury was grave of face, as men well may be who have the ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... sullen, Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill. Quite round the pile, a row of reverend elms, Coeval near with that, all ragged show, Long lash'd by the rude winds: some rift half down Their branchless trunks; others so thin at top, That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree. Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen'd here: 50 Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs; Dead men have come again, and walk'd about; And the great ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... He pointed out across the creek with startling abruptness, in a direction where the land sloped gradually upwards towards the more distant foothills, in a broken carpet of pine woods. He was indicating a rift in the forest, where, for a long stretch, a wide clearing had been made by the axes of the pioneers ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... psychology of the sex life. That a great deal of domestic dissatisfaction and unhappiness could be obviated if wisdom and experience instructed the husband and wife in the matter I have not the slightest doubt. The first rift in the domestic lute often dates from difficulties in the intimate life of the pair, difficulties that need not exist if there were knowledge. That reason and love may coexist, that the beauty of life is not dependent on a sentimentalized ignorance are cardinal in my code of beliefs. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... an instant later, and just as they entered the door—through which another and sadder burden had been carried but a few instants before—her eyes caught sight of the south-western sky, and, without heeding, saw white sunlight shining in shaft-like lines from a rift in a slaty cloud. Emotions will attach themselves to scenes that are simultaneous—however foreign in essence these scenes may be—as chemical waters will crystallize on twigs and wires. Even after that time any mental agony brought less vividly to Cytherea's ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... dig a grave? In such hard ground, knives would make no impression, and the body must be buried deeply, or it would be rooted up by the dingoes, whose howl we could plainly hear around us, as they bayed at the moon. We spread ourselves out in different directions, in the hope of finding some rift or recess that would answer the purpose, but in the imperfect light, we failed to discover anything, so were compelled to wait for dawn. I do not think any of us slept much. One of our little party suddenly snatched away in so unforeseen a manner, gave us all food for reflection—for which ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... the middle of the road. Beyond, one rift of rich gold in that colourless grey evening seemed to make him stand out in dark relief. She saw him, slender and firm, as if the setting sun had given him to her. A deep pain took hold of her, and she knew she must love him. And she had discovered him, discovered ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... of the City Shopwoman A Maiden's Pledge The Child and the Sage Mismet An Autumn Rain-scene Meditations on a Holiday An Experience The Beauty The Collector Cleans his Picture The Wood Fire Saying Good-bye On the tune called The Old-hundred-and-fourth The Opportunity Evelyn G. Of Christminster The Rift Voices from things growing in a Churchyard On the Way "She did not turn" Growth in May The Children and Sir Nameless At the Royal Academy Her Temple A Two-years' Idyll By Henstridge Cross at the year's end ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... conscientiously performed, from June to December, and round again. The last thing attended to before putting on his coat was always carefully to brush and dispose his hair. Until within two or three years, he had been able to keep up appearances by coaxing a gray rift across the top of the bald place; but it had grown month by month thinner and grayer, and more difficult to keep in position, until at last he had bravely told himself it was a vanity and a delusion, and had consigned it to obscurity and oblivion among the rusty side-locks which still ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... beyond it the forest seems to extend to the foot of the Pyrenees, standing up blue in the distance some forty miles away. The clouds hang over the mountain summits, and slowly the monarch of day descends seemingly into a dark rift, leaving a track of golden light behind him. The greeny-blue sky above shines and glows for a few minutes longer, and then all is suffused in a soft and mournful grey. The change is almost sudden. The day is over, and night has ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... thou come unto her, from her palms she will not lift The dark face hidden deep within them like the moon in cloudy rift. ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... to," he protested. "Everything was all right until this political business came up between us. But that opened the rift. I couldn't do as he wanted me to, and my sympathies were with the corporations which I thought he was fighting unjustly. So when Mr. McVickar made me an offer, I accepted in good faith, believing that I could really do something toward ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... at himself. What was this that had come to him? A new pleasure in life. A little trembling rill of joy bubbling up in his heart; a rift in the dark clouds of fate; a show of sunshine where he had expected never to see the light again. Why was it so pleasant to have that little hand resting upon his arm? Was it really pleasant or was it only ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... masses, and the northwest wind still hunted them across the sky, until there came, first a tiny rift for a star, then a gap for a whole constellation, and finally a broad burst of moonlight. Gilbert now saw that the timber to which he clung was lodged nearly in the centre of the channel, as the water ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... he felt he had blundered. It was the first real shadow on his courtship—perhaps the little rift within the lute. He turned back to Becky for sympathy. There was no Becky. She had taken advantage of the conversation to slip away. He found her again in a moment though, at the other end of the room. She was seated before ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this strain until the clock chimed twelve. The storm still blew over the house, but the rain had ceased, and when they looked out of the window, they could see a rift in the clouds, through which the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... stealing westward silently over the still canopy of leaves, both combatants were still there; and they were still here, too, when the sun, silting in through a rift in the foliage, found and bathed them. The owl was crouched as she had been when the moon left her—crouched, and with her wings just a little open, like a bird about to take flight; but she had already taken wing ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Inn, his luggage being dragged "down-along" on sledges and brought "up-along" on donkeys. In a word, Clovelly is not built like unto other towns; it seems to have been flung up from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills, and to have clung there these eight hundred years of its existence. It has held fast, but it has not expanded, for the very good reason that it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses clinging like limpets ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of azure drift, And on the hillside I can see The villages of Imari, Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift Their twisted columns of smoke on high, Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie, With sunshine streaming through each rift, And broken arches ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... grew fewer and fewer. At a little distance the dim structures of the Portico and Theatre of Pompeius could be seen, looming up to an exaggerated size in the evening haze. A grey fog was drifting up from the Tiber, and out of a rift in a heavy cloud-bank a beam of the imprisoned moon was struggling. Along the road were peasants with their carts and asses hastening home. Over on the Pincian Mount the dark green masses of the splendid gardens of Pompeius and of Lucullus were just visible. The air ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... as though from a great distance, Vaillant's voice saying irritatedly, "Let Paula take care of him, Webber. Look at this—we're going to cross another rift—" ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... chuprassie is our Colorado beetle, our potato disease, our Home ruler, our cupboard skeleton, the little rift in our lute. The red-coated chuprassie is a cancer in our Administration. To be rid of it there is hardly any surgical operation we would not cheerfully undergo. You might extract the Bishop of Bombay, amputate the Governor of ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... unbendingness of outward forms in our explanations of Catholic principles, which renders our theologians dry and unattractive to the most catholicly inclined portion of our Protestants." The choice which these youths made, towards 1830, was, though they did not know it, the beginning of a rift that widened. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... before the increasing brilliancy of the sun. The road ran along the bottom of the deep valley, where there was change of scene with every curve of the Dordogne. A field of maize showed how different was the climate here from that of the bleak plateau above the deep rift in the rocks. I stopped beside a little runnel that came down from the wooded heights to pick some flowers of yellow balsam, and while there my eye fell upon a splendid green lizard basking in the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... entered the land without shadows, Thou who, 'neath the shadow, so long Hast sat with thy white hands close-folded, And lips that could utter no song; Through a rift in the cloud, for an instant, Thine eyes caught a glimpse of that shore, And Earth with its gloom was forgotten, And Heaven is thine ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... silence, the gloom in the chasm thickened. The sun had passed beyond the southwestern forests, and through the narrow rift between the mountain walls there fell but the ebbing light of day, dissolving itself into the shadows of dusk as it struggled weakly in the cavernous depths. For a few minutes this swift fading of day into night gripped the adventurers in its spell. What did the lonely solitudes of that chasm ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... to the spot where the hole ended in what was quite hard sandy rock. Then we looked up at the top, where we could dimly make out the crack or rift through which the smoke had gone, but there was no daylight to be seen through it, though of course it ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... had caught a rift in the clouds and with this denial his calmness deserted him for passion. The old family love, strong even though he had himself so violated it, burst into flame in his heart. Once more he would fight for those he was leaving. Why had he never thought of the window ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Bob's resinous wood to the flame till it began to blaze well, and then winking to himself, as Dean saw, the big fellow stepped right forward before the rest, holding the improvised torch so that the light illumined the glittering walls and ceiling of the rift of ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... droughts in south; Congo River floods (seasonal); in the east, in the Great Rift ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... gathers them in—can it make the shore? Here and there a little smooth water, an occasional rift of light through the clouds—alas! only to be followed by greater darkness—and the pictures cease. But no, there is ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the touch of his trident a wonder! Virtue to earth from his deity flows; From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder, A dark-watered fountain ebullient rose. Inly elastic, with airiest lightness It leapt, till it cheated the eyesight; and, lo! It showed in the sun, with a various brightness, The fine-woven hues of the heavenly bow. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... eleven o'clock, the moon burst brightly forth through a rift in the clouds, and the waves sparkled again as if illuminated by a submarine glimmer. I start up and look around me. Is it merely imagination? or do I really see a black speck floating, on the dazzling white- ness of the waters, a speck that cannot be a rock, because ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... and happy as of yore, or driving off in separate cabs to take refuge in the bosoms of their separate families? Darsie opined that all would seem the same on the surface, but darkly hinted at the little rift within the lute, and somehow after that night the glamour seemed to have departed from this honeymoon pair, and the fair seeming ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... on the steamship Baroda, moving down the Red Sea, once thought to be an arm of the Indian Ocean, but which we now know to be only a portion of "the great rift valley,"—the longest and deepest and widest trough on the earth's surface, which extends from the base of Mount Lebanon and the Sea of Galilee, through the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, the dried up wadies, the Red Sea, and the chain of lakes and Nyanzas discovered in ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... wooing, only a meeting, for a brief space, of two human beings who had been made for each other, but whom fate separated by a rift which could not be bridged. Mary Lincoln knew this, John Dacre did not; but as he had bade her good-night just before, he felt a sadness steal over his heart, and his voice had trembled as he spoke. Even ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... flew by, and the moon, glinting now and then through a rift in the clouds, whitened the curling waves, but showed no signs of the Brixham, or of ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... character was "as black as Hell," and upon Rachel's complaint to the session, he was "churched" for "breach of the Ninth Commandment and also for a violation of his covenant agreement." This incident caused a rift which gradually developed into something very like a schism in the local congregation, and this internal disagreement finally produced a split between Eleazar's son, Dr. John Wheelock, who was now president of Dartmouth College, and the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... lingering parting, and I was alone again. The brook went babbling on, but telling no tales, the birds were busy with their own affairs, and the sunbeams winked brightly through the leaves. The little rift, giving a glimpse of the inner life of two souls, had closed and left no outward sign; ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... a barn. Cytisus and thyme and juniper grew rank, but above all the place was strewn with rocks, leg-twisting boulders, and great cliffs where eagles dwelt. Being a seaman, Atta had his bearings. The path to Delphi left the shore road near the Hot Springs, and went south by a rift of the mountain. If he went up the slope in a beeline he must strike it in time and find better going. Still it was an eerie place to be tramping after dark. The Hellenes had strange gods of the thicket and hillside, and he had no wish to intrude upon their sanctuaries. He ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... not a rift was visible in the leaden sky, and a slanting gray veil of sleety rain darkened the air and pelted the dumb, shivering earth, Beryl sat on the side of her cot, with her feet resting on the round of a chair, and her hands clasped ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... days of watching, in hunger and thirst, for a sail; the final loss of all companions save a gorilla-like half-breed, whose animal instinct of love and fidelity fell about the poor boy like a protecting garment. Then comes this bright spot in his life away in Hili-liland, like a momentary rift in the clouds of a stormy day. For Pym the sun shone with a heavenly effulgence, whilst the obstructions of a dire destiny were for a time removed; but when again the clouds closed between him and the ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... riding out a storm at an altitude of about three thousand feet. All night we had hovered above the tossing billows of the moonlight clouds. The detonation of the thunder and the glare of lightning through an occasional rift in the vaporous wall proclaimed the continued fury of the tempest upon the surface of the sea; but we, far above it all, rode in comparative ease upon the upper gale. With the coming of dawn the clouds beneath us became a glorious sea of gold and silver, soft and beautiful; but ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it leaves nothing for the imagination to desire. The heavens and the earth were both on fire. Silence added its awful and desolate majesty. Infinitude, immensity pressed down upon the soul on every side; not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a rift on the breast of the sand, which was ruffled only with little ridges scarcely rising above its surface. Far as the eye could reach the horizon fell away into space, marked by a slender line, slim as the edge of a sabre,—like as in summer ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... alone. Her eyes were heavy, for she had been weeping long. Her sky seemed overcast; there was not a rift discoverable anywhere, and she was almost broken-hearted. Nearly two months had passed, and no sign of her lover had she seen to brighten her. Edward had told her that her lover had renounced her, and ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the London Graphic, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... in by hills that lie up against the sky, marked off into fields by whin hedges, till they look like sloping chequer-boards. Beyond them, in places, tower up the mountain-tops of dark Donegal, crusted over with black heather, seamed by rift and ravine, bare in places where these rocks, those bones of the mountains, have pushed themselves through the heather, till it looks like a ragged cloak. The sun shines, the rooks flap busily about, as noisy as a parliament, the air is keen, and so ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... open the door to let you in," explained Willie, peering out through the rift, "'cause this blasted door ain't moved fur so long that its hinges have growed together; but if you'll come round to the back of the house ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... becoming more overshadowed by evening. The misty gloom, usual at twilight, became thicker; it was like a growth of darkness at the bottom of a well. The opening of the creek seaward, a narrow passage, traced on the almost night-black interior a pallid rift where the waves were moving. You must have been quite close to perceive the hooker moored to the rocks, and, as it were, hidden by the great cloaks of shadow. A plank thrown from on board on to a low and level projection ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... because we could not see which way to go; now it is clear, and we know just as little about it. It looks as if we were at the northern boundary of the open water. To the west the ice appears to extend south again. To the north it is compact and white—only a small open rift or pool every here and there; and the sky is whitish-blue everywhere on the horizon. It is from the east we have just come, but there we could see very little; and for want of anything better to do we shall make a short excursion in that direction, on the possibility of finding openings ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... He saw the rift in the moving sidewalk coming, far ahead, a great, gaping rent in the metal fabric of the swiftly moving escalator, as if a huge blade were slicing it down the middle. Harry's hand went to his mouth, choking back a scream as the hole moved with incredible ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... plain to him that there had been no previous little rift to prepare the young man for the cervical operation which awaited him, and he edged a little nearer, in order to be handy to catch Sam if the shock ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... snarling over him, rendering the task of regaining his feet or securing the ladder a matter of considerable difficulty. When he had at last succeeded in both efforts he was just by a hair's-breadth too late to be of any use. The Sheep had definitely disappeared under the ice-rift. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... finer instincts told him that he did not possess her full confidence, and he was too proud to ask it. So they lived together a few short weeks after marriage, on outward terms of courtesy and cordiality, but with this little rift of dissatisfaction gradually yet surely widening into a fissure that should rend each of these proud ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... short distance from the bushes, and now there suddenly appeared through a rift in the clouds an immense Rainbow. It was perfectly formed and glistened with a dozen or more superb tintings that were so vivid and brilliant and blended into one another so exquisitely that everyone paused to gaze enraptured upon the sight. Steadily, ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... spoke, while still his greeting kiss Ached in her hair. She did not dare to lift Her eyes to his—her anguished eyes to his, While tears smote crystal in her throat. One rift Of weakness humored might ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... a sudden rift in the fog that gave a moment's hope, but it closed down again. A minute afterwards, with a suddenness that was strange, the whole blue ocean lay before us. Then full steam ahead. The fog still was thick behind us in New York Bay. We saw it far ahead coming in from the ocean. All at once the captain ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... when time and God's resources have wrought their will upon man. They are to be cherished as the mariner cherishes the guiding star that stands upon the horizon; they are to be cherished as some traveler, lost in a close, dark forest, cherishes the moment when the sun breaks through a rift in the clouds and he takes his bearings out of the swamp and toward his home. Visions are God within the soul. They come to lead man away from sin and sorrow. They come to guide him to ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... wi' him at his wark," thought Jack, and they walked along, only now and then giving utterance to some common place remark. Dick's conscience accused him. He felt that he possessed a secret that Jack could not share. There was a rift in the lute. Perfect confidence had ceased to exist between them. Why should it be so? he asked himself. Jack has committed no fault. Had the case been reversed he felt sure that Jack would have confided in him. ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... at his side, and now quite resigned to the semi-official nature of the ball, rose and drank the health of the distinguished guest in long and flowery praises. Rezanov responded in briefer but no less felicitous vein, and concluded by remarking that the only rift in the lute of his present enchanting experience was the fear that whereas he had nearly died of starvation several times during the past three years, he was now threatened with a far more ignominious end, so delicious and irresistible were the temptations ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... issue was an iron door; From whence by stairs descending to the ground. In the blind grot a safe retreat he found. Its outlet ended in a brake o'ergrown With brambles, choak'd by time, and now unknown. A rift there was, which from the mountain's height Convey'd a glimm'ring and malignant light, A breathing place to draw the damps away, A ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... warm. So warm, indeed, that long clefts, caused by the unequal expansion of the ice, appeared here and there. The man from the plane had not gone more than fifty yards when he halted sharply. With a crack like thunder, a cleft had opened at his very feet—a rift ten feet deep in places, apparently bottomless in others, and very long. Not wanting to go around it, he slid down one side and, with an ice pick, started to hack a foothold in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... makes, With goodly purposes[*] there as they sit: And in his falsed fancy he her takes To be the fairest wight that lived yit; 265 Which to expresse he bends his gentle wit, And thinking of those braunches greene to frame A girlond for her dainty forehead fit, He pluckt a bough;[*] out of whose rift there came Small drops of gory bloud, that trickled down ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... which they mounted, and descended into another valley. Here they came upon Pendle Water, and while skirting its banks, could see at a great depth below, the river rushing over its rocky bed like an Alpine torrent. The scenery had now begun to assume a savage and sombre character. The deep rift through which the river ran was evidently the result of some terrible convulsion of the earth, and the rocky strata were strangely and fantastically displayed. On the further side the banks rose up precipitously, consisting for the most part of bare cliffs, though now and then a tree ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... British throne. He disliked his daughter-in-law, Caroline, daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach, and spoke of her as "Cette diablesse Madame la Princesse." The opposition was not slow to take advantage of the rift, and planted itself on the side of his Royal Highness. It proposed, on the Civil List vote, a separate revenue of L100,000 for the Prince—which infuriated the King, as it was ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... monsters as the one which I had seen, which may well have been the old cave-bear, enormously enlarged and modified by its new environment. For countless aeons the internal and the external creation had kept apart, growing steadily away from each other. Then there had come some rift in the depths of the mountain which had enabled one creature to wander up and, by means of the Roman tunnel, to reach the open air. Like all subterranean life, it had lost the power of sight, but this had no doubt been compensated for by nature in other directions. Certainly it had some means ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... back to his world and pick up the threads again, but not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to help her ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... musingly. "Wasn't that the place where they used to put a tripod over a rift in the rock and a veiled priestess sat down and waited for Apollo's message to come to her? We had that up at school when ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... as I watch thee, all unfettered sweeping High o'er the rift that weighs my pinion here, I yearn like thee my plume in ether steeping, To soar away ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... depending on which is chosen, past or future. When your body's cells absorb all of the floating matter, they will be either positively or negatively charged to such an extent that their revolutions will be rapidly accelerated. According to theory, the increased speed of the revolutions would cause a rift in the time continuum, or in other words, would change the proportion between your existence in the temporal and material realms and change your location in time, thereby propelling you into the past or ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,—a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these mountain ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... stand superb, the background to the picture. All as yet is sombre in tone, black, dark green, and brown and gray. The mist hangs heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose life is long since burned out. But, see! Through the deep, jagged rift where runs the Potomac, along the rock-bound gorge through which in ages past the torrent burst its way, there creeps a host of tiny shafts of color—the skirmishers, the eclaireurs, of the irresistible array of which they form but the foremost ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... friendship, the astute Redell discovered a rift in Cappy's armor—two rifts, in fact. The first was that Cappy feared and loathed old age and fiercely resented even the most shadowy intimation that with age he was, to employ a sporting phrase, "losing his punch." ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... secretiveness and reserve entirely alien to his own open and honourable disposition, and also saw less of Mr. Gaskell. His friend tried, indeed, to win his confidence and affection in every way in his power; but in spite of this the rift between them widened insensibly, and my brother lost the fellowship and counsel of a true friend at a time when he could ill ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... mysterious groanings and rustlings in the hedge, and the long branches of the trees moaned as they swayed. It was so dark they were almost groping their way, and could barely see the banks on either side. Suddenly, through a rift in the trees came a faint gleam of starlight, and oh! horror of horrors! What was that black dog-like object running rapidly towards them up the lane? Mavis, whose over-sensitive nerves were strung ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... were again at the mouth of the drain, the lashing storm had worn itself out. The night was silently serene; the clouds were breaking, and two or three big stars peered down. There was a moon, and having advantage of a rift in the clouds, a ray struck white on Arlington. Over across, one might make out the tall dark Maryland hills. Far away on the river burned the lights of the Zulu Queen; she was holding her best speed down-stream, having reason to think her ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the beaver marsh and on the farther shore of the lake she saw a little glimmer of light through the rift in the trees. She dared not believe in its reality at first. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination only, a hallucination born of her starvation, child of her heartfelt prayer. She looked away, then peered again. But, yes—a tiny gleam of yellow light twinkled ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta. The weather, which continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Mary?" asked Uncle Tucker with a slight rift in the gloom. "They are some women in the world, if a man was to seal up his trouble in a termater-can and swoller it, would get a button-hook and a can-opener to go after him to get it out. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... moonshine, and dashed the bottle against the trunk of a beech. The fiery stuff does its work in a hurry. He was thirsty when he reached the mouth of a brook that tumbled down the mountain along the pathway that would lead him home, and he stooped to drink where the water sparkled in a rift of dim light from overhead. Then he sat upright on a stone, with his wide hat-brim curved in a crescent over his forehead, his hands caught about his knees, and his eyes ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... says Messer Marco, precisely the actual number of stages from Tali-fu to the present boundary of Yung-ch'ang. That this river must have been the demarcation between the two provinces is obvious; one glance into that deep rift, the only exit from which is by painful worked artificial zigzags which, under the most favourable conditions, cannot be called safe, will satisfy the most sceptical geographer. The exact statement ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 1742, that is, from the time of Murray of Broughton's visit to Rome. Indifference to religious strictness was, even then, accompanied by a love of wine, in some slight degree. Already, too, a little rift in the friendship of the princely brothers was apparent; there were secrets between them which Henry must have ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... to another dream—the last. Suffocating and vague, the stillness waxed and ran over the troubled edges of eternity. The Plain, gloomy and implacable, was illuminated on its anonymous horizon by one rift of naked, leering light. Over its illimitable surface surged and shivered women, white, dazzling, numberless. As waves that, lap on lap, sweep fiercely across the sky-line, as bisons that furiously charge upon grassy wastes, "as the rill that runs from Bulicame to be portioned ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Legate the Primate had averted a conflict between the national desire for self-government and the Papal claims of overlordship. But his death gave the signal for a more serious struggle, for it was in the oppression of the Church of England by the Popes through the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened which was destined to widen into the gulf that parted the one from the other at the Reformation. In the mediaeval theory of the Papacy, as Innocent and his successors held it, Christendom, as a spiritual realm of which the Popes were the head, took the feudal ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Portsmouth. The station at New Market is a small wooden building, with one railroad passing on one side, and another on another, and the two crossing each other at right angles. At a little distance stands a black, large, old, wooden church, with a square tower, and broken windows, and a great rift through the middle of the roof, all in a stage of dismal ruin and decay. A farm-house of the old style, with a long sloping roof, and as black as the church, stands on the opposite side of the road, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. The rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less invariably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the unmarried, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... ahead so soon as the sun was up, no chance for watering their horses could be thrown away. Just as he expected, Drummond found the descent becoming more gradual, and in a moment or two the bottom of the dark rift was found, and presently, keeping keen lookout for the reflection of the stars still lingering overhead, the leading men were rewarded, and halted at the edge of a shining pool of clear, though not very cool, water, and the horses thrust their hot muzzles deep into the wave. Here, shaded ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... transmitting a medal for Sir Walter Scott; sums generously sent for his brother John's medical education in Germany; loans to Alexander, and a frustrate scheme for starting a new Annual Register, designed to be a literary resume of the year, make up the record. The "rift in the lute," Carlyle's incapacity for domestic life, was already showing itself. Within the course of an orthodox honeymoon he had begun to shut himself up in interior solitude, seldom saw his wife from breakfast till 4 P.M., when they dined ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... grounds, yet do they generally affect the sound, black, deep, and fast mould, rather warm than over-wet and cold, and a little rising; for this produces the firmest timber; though my L. Bacon prefers that which grows in the moister grounds for ship-timber, as the most tough, and less subject to rift. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... I had three distinct shocks in quick succession. Flashy, painted and rouged as I was I dreaded Orontides' eyes. There he was behind his counter, visible through a rift in the press of handsomely ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... plan, on which he made no comment, but, taking her by the hand as if she were a little child, he led her through the undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and standing at wider distances. Among them was the tree he had spoken of—an elm; huge, hollow, distorted, and headless, with a rift in ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... Then courage returned, and I scraped away more dirt in the light of the electric torch I had provided. The surface I uncovered was fishy and glassy—a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There was a rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed area was huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter. Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole and ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the dark ravine which I should have descended had I crossed the Nufenen. I thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills I was half tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road also held me, and so ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... passages where absolute darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great Auditorium appeared before us softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... the canon, filling it with gloom. Sometimes they hung above from wall to wall and formed a roof: then a gust of wind from a side-canon made a rift in them and the blue heavens were revealed, or they dispersed in patches which settled on the crags, while puffs of vapor issued out of the smaller gulches, and occasionally formed bars across the canon, one above another, each opening a different vista. When they discharged ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Presently a rift in the clouds gave passage to an oblique ray of light that clearly proved that the sun was setting ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall. The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... same. If you traverse it on foot or on horseback, there is ever some minor novelty. And on the swift train, if you draw down the curtain against the glare, or turn to your book, you are sure to miss something of interest—a deep canon rift in the plain, a turn that gives a wide view glowing in a hundred hues in the sun, a savage gorge with beetling rocks, a solitary butte or red truncated pyramid thrust up into the blue sky, a horizontal ledge cutting the horizon line as straight as a ruler ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... all very ordinary. She was more concerned about the wind, to which they had become once more exposed as they reached the end of the rift. On they pressed, five or six steps at each attempt, stopping to rest twice the length of time they actually traveled. It was necessary now to cling to the rock with both hands, and once Cunora ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... which pussy has crept is small and barely furnished; it would be perfectly dark too, but that the holes in the roof and the rift in the door admit light into this most squalid room. There is nothing standing against its rough gray walls but a wooden chest, near this a few earthen bowls stand on the ground with a wooden cup and a gracefully ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... various points. The movement was a hopeless failure because the working men declined to have anything to do with the so-called leaders. When the split took place in the Chamber of Mines, it became the business of Dr. Leyds and the President to keep the rift open. This was done persistently and in a very open manner—the seceders being informed upon several occasions that a fusion of the two Chambers would not be welcome to the Government. Both before and since that time the same policy has found expression in the misleading ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... until the road turned toward the range and an opening which he followed into a steeper and narrower rift beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... than the aged grandam. It was pleasing, and yet it was sad, to see how well we can make up our mind to what is inevitable. And such a sight brings up to one a glimpse of Future Years. The cloud seems to part before one, and through the rift you discern your earthly track far away, and a jaded pilgrim plodding along it with weary step; and though the pilgrim does not look like you, yet you know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... that gripped the revolver remained motionless. Through a rift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within a yard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting for the brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man. ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... from the bones; but as every wagon left the place, climbing the divide beyond, the occupants forgot their sufferings and talked of the desert as something which they had left behind. For Furnace Creek canyon lay ahead of them, a rift in the black range which rose between them and the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... for a moment while the bewildering roar grew deafening. Nothing that had life in it could scale the horrible smooth walls that hung over them, and through a rift in the vapour he could see a filigree of whitened pines that seemed very far away projected against the blue. They were, he fancied, at least a thousand feet above him, and he and Okanagan alone far down ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss |
